number 32 • Summer 2017

Authors

James C. Capretta

articles

Today's federal budget process allows lawmakers to avoid painful fiscal and economic realities, which means that major problems go unaddressed. Changing that will require political will, but the budget process itself can help build that will. A few key reforms can help prepare the ground for a politics of economic growth and fiscal restraint.

In recent years, conservatives have struggled to communicate their basic economic message to the public. Their unwillingness to confront the causes of the 2007-08 financial crisis has allowed the left to blame the economic downturn on the right. Meanwhile, conservatives' lack of clarity about their own agenda for both near- and long-term growth has left them ill-equipped to respond to the left's critiques. It is time to set the historical record straight and to help the public see what pro-growth conservatism has to offer.

Opponents of Obamacare insist they want to "repeal and replace" the disastrous law before it takes full effect in 2014. But most of these opponents have focused far more on "repeal" than on "replace," and as a result the substance of an alternative health-care reform law has yet to be fully articulated. Policymakers can differ on the particulars of a reform plan, but any effective solution must include a few key principles and elements — all of which lead toward the creation of a true market in health care.

The mid-term elections have handed Republicans a mixed bag: a majority in the House, but continuing Democratic control of the Senate and the presidency. Given their new power, as well as the constraints that come with it, what should Republicans do to encourage growth, address the nation's fiscal challenges, and restore government to its proper role? Three key battles — over health care, discretionary spending, and entitlement reform — will determine just how much the new Congress can achieve, and whether voters will give Republicans a real chance to govern in 2012.

Champions of the health-care legislation enacted this spring point to the law's coverage of Americans with pre-existing medical conditions as one of its chief benefits. But unfortunately, the law throws the baby out with the bathwater — overturning our entire health-care system in order to address a relatively narrow problem, and in the process only worsening other difficulties. A system of state-run high-risk insurance pools would do a much better job of solving the "pre-existing condition problem" — while also preserving and strengthening what does work about American health care.